Seoul Food

46,300 websites may have used the above semi-pun in some shape or form before me, but given the subject matter and my own penchant for corny tricks of the English language, I really couldn’t title this post anything else.

As you may have guessed, I just spent the weekend in Seoul, where despite eating two zinger burgers in one day, I also managed to get a taste of some of the street food.

Shortly after arriving we discovered our camera was missing – either left on the KTX or nabbed at Seoul Station – so forgive the shaky details and lack of accompanying photos!

First up, a midnight stroll in Insadong yielded a bowl of steaming shell dwellers from a busy pojangmacha. The shellfish in question were large, round and cone shaped (I’ve forgotten the name) requiring the use of a toothpick to pry out the body. Once liberated, the meat was chewy and earthy, reminding me immensely of mushrooms. Dipped in gochujang and washed down with an ice-cold beer, I could think of worse things to do on a balmy night in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world.

The next day on a trip to Dongdaemun market we stumbled across some bindaeduk. Bindaeduk has been on my “to-eat” list for a while now, so it was fortuitous to come across it and an opportunity not to be missed. Similar to pajeon, bindaeduk is a pancake made out of mung beans and despite the absence of potatoes the closest thing to hash browns I’ve come to in Korea yet. The one we tackled was thick and crispy on the outside, strewn with beansprouts and green onion and incredibly garlicky. Luckily, my buddy soy sauce was there to temper the flames making bindaeduk a good, hearty post-lunch pre-dinner snack.

Finally, I rinsed away the day with a handy cocktail in a bag in Hongdae. A little stall serves these in thick plastic bags with straws sticking out. I opted for a kahlua milk, and retired to a nearby park to drink it among a few hundred other people who had the same idea. Fantastic.